Lede of the day: 'At a time of economic distress...'

By BEN SMITH

07/27/2009 12:15 PM EDT

Last month, Arianna Huffington took offense at my writing about the "symbiosis" between Huffington Post and the White House, suggesting (gasp!) that HuffPost is "left leaning" and part of "the new partisan media," and writing that "what's good for the Huffington Post is good for the White House, and vice versa."

As readers of this blog know, I have a lot of respect for the new partisan media, feel their competition intensely, and link Huffington Post and TPM scoops and reportage all the time. Huffington Post, in particular, also does, and is, a lot of different things at once, and one of them is strong reporting from Sam Stein and others.

Another of those things, however, is to advance the administration's view of the world -- even in the course of getting quite good scoops. And in that context, the lede of Stein's piece today about a resolution pressing Obama to apologize to police is a bit of a classic:

At a time of economic distress, two wars, and a health care reform effort stalled by political friction, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, (R-Mich.) is set to introduce a bill calling on Barack Obama to formally apologize to the Cambridge Police.

Arianna wrote that "unlike Fox and Bush, HuffPost regularly takes on the Obama administration." It's true that some of Huffington Post's many voices regularly clash with the administration; and some of Fox's (see: immigration reform) clashed with Bush.

But in the matter of day-to-day worldview, the lede speaks for itself.